The End of Mr. Garment

by Vincent Starrett

  “Get out!” Mollock almost jumped.

  “Yes, I do. Those confounded letters confused us. It’s extraordinary how one’s mind will cling to the idea of letters! But what sane woman, Duns, indulging in an illicit correspondence, would keep them around the house, where at any minute her husband might find them? If letters were exchanged—and doubtless they were—you may be sure that they are in a safety deposit vault or someplace equally protected and inaccessible. I don’t quite think she would destroy them, but she would certainly hide them beyond hope of discovery.”

  “Nevertheless—” began Mollock stubbornly; but Ghost interrupted.

  “I know, old chap. You are going to tell me again what Mrs. Kimbark did the day you and Anger called upon her. It was your account of that day that gave me my first vague, doubting thought, which has since crystallized into certainty. The thing she ran to look for, fearing you had come to seek it, was obviously the weapon that killed Garment.”

  “Oh, I say!” Mollock rose to his feet and paced the room.

  “You remember my asking you at the time whether the thing had to be a package of letters? And how Mrs. Kimbark acted?”

  Mollock was distressed. “Walter,” he said, “I think you’re raving. You’re as good as saying that Mrs. Kimbark committed the murder.”

  “Well, why not?” retorted Ghost. “I fancy she had as much opportunity as anybody else there that evening. And perhaps as good a motive. However, I’m not really saying just that. She may have hidden it to protect her husband.”

  “Then you think that Kimbark murdered Garment!”

  “He may have. I don’t know. A great many persons think so, I imagine. What I do think is that Mrs. Kimbark thinks he did. If she had reason to believe he suspected her of infidelity, she would have reason to think he killed Garment. She may have knowledge of his movements just before Garment’s arrival that we lack. I think she looked for and found the knife—”

  “In the house?”

  “Possibly; but more likely outside. Kimbark, or whoever killed Garment, would know that the house would be searched rather promptly. It was, wasn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. After the murder there were detectives all over the place.”

  “She may even have known intuitively where to look, if Kimbark is indeed the murderer.”

  “And you expect to find it where she hid it—all covered still with Garment’s blood, and all the rest of it?”

  Ghost laughed. “I’m not such an ass as that, Duns, and you know it. It will have been cleaned, of course; but it may still yield a clue.”

  Mollock was now annoyed. He ought to have been told all this before, he thought. After a moment he brightened. “Perhaps she’s got it with her on the yacht.”

  “I thought of that—although it wouldn’t look well, and might be awkward, if it happens to be at all large. But Cicotte has a man on the yacht who may be able to tell us about that when he returns. He thinks he’s looking for letters, but it is to be hoped he would notice any other item of interest. In the meantime, say nothing about this.”

  “Hang it!” said Mollock. “I was hoping I’d seen the last of Chicago.”

  “My dear fellow, you’re not going along. Not that I would try to stop you, if you insisted; but it isn’t necessary. It’s a purely routine job. And I’d like you to be around here when the yacht comes in, in case I don’t get back in time. You’re to meet Cicotte’s man—he’s a steward named Johnson— and learn what he has to report.”

  “H-mph,” said Mollock. “We seem to be in this case with a vengeance, both of us,” he added, and grinned a bit sardonically.

  Ghost all but blushed. “I know!” He laughed apologetically. “How do I get into these things, Duns?”

  He listened to his friend’s report of the Birdflight and Charlesworth interviews and agreed that the literary agent seemed to be telling the truth.

  “Another matter of routine, you see, Duns; but all loose ends have to be tied up. You handled it very well.”

  “And what about the Amersham case?” asked Mollock, flattered. “Am I left in charge of that, too?”

  “If you like. But the Amersham case isn’t as immediately important as it was. Mrs. Pope has knocked it in the head by refusing to be the body. It’s still a good problem, but its connection with the Garment mystery has been snipped. Don’t make the mistake of connecting them too closely, or indeed at all. I tell you now that the discovery of the woman’s body, at this time, its identification as that of Mrs. Pope, and all that the incident seemed to imply, was and is the merest coincidence. The cases are not related. Of course the body has to be identified. The police, I believe, are going over their lists of missing persons. If you really want to help, ask the Popes about servants employed by them, within the last two years, who are no longer on the payroll.”

  For some time the writer of mystery stories sat with folded arms, watching his friend’s game. Red king, black queen; black seven, red six; red deuce—

  “I say, Walter,” he chuckled, at length, “what a lark it would be, though, if this Amersham woman now swung the spotlight of suspicion onto somebody else in the case! Eh? Dromgoole—or Van Peter—or somebody like that!”

  Ghost looked up with a smile. “Coincidence is a queer old girl,” he admitted; “but that would be rather overacting her part, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so,” agreed Mollock. For a moment he was pensive. “I keep thinking of everything in terms of sensational fiction. Can’t help it, I suppose.”

  Ghost chewed his long cigar reflectively. “We’re all puppets in a sensational tale,” he said. “A mystery story, if it comes to that. Mystery! It’s at the heart of everything. And the only solution is in— perhaps absolution?”

  Chapter Ten

  The Kimbark butler guarded the lake-front dwelling in Chicago, assisted by two maids. To all three Cicotte was a personality vividly remembered. He had questioned them very thoroughly on the night of the murder. They now made no difficulty about admitting him, and Ghost looked with interest at the handsome chambers that had backgrounded the tragedy. He strolled leisurely through the lower rooms, mentally reconstructing the scene of congestion that had preceded the announcement of the novelist’s arrival.

  Mollock’s description of the place had been fairly accurate. Still it was always better to see things with one’s own eyes. The rooms were now silent and as rigidly ordered as a museum, but Ghost had no trouble in visualizing the earlier spectacle.

  He paused for a moment in the library, crossed to the small writing room opposite—where Mrs. Kimbark had hidden something—and penetrated to the kitchen by way of the butler’s pantry. Then his pace changed. Suddenly he was all but running. Watch in hand, while Cicotte stared in comical fascination, he raced the various distances that interested him—from the kitchen to the front door, from library to living room, from pantry to servants’ entrance. From hell to breakfast, it occurred to the bewildered Cicotte. Odd little journeys, some of them, that told the official detective nothing.

  To Cicotte only one thing seemed clear: that Ghost suspected everybody in the house. The dramatic fictional methods of the amateur at once amused the professional and filled him with apprehension. The eyes of the dismayed butler followed the speeding investigator, when the two encountered, with horrified curiosity.

  A pair of French windows leading to a small balcony at the side of the house particularly engaged Ghost’s stationary attention. Resuming his remarkable series of short dashes, he carefully timed all distances to these windows, and concluded each performance by leaping across the balcony to the lawn. Concealed from neighbourhood observation by the shrubbery, he ran swiftly from a spot beneath the balcony to the entrance gates of the establishment, and racing back repeated the performance from the servants’ entrance at the rear.

  All in all, it was a startling exhibition of activity by the dignified Walter Ghost. In the end, slightly winded, he smiled pleasantly at his collaborator and said nothin
g whatever.

  “Well?” questioned Cicotte, deeply curious.

  “Just eliminating impossibilities,” explained the amateur, resting after his exertions. “If Garment was murdered by somebody already in the house, that somebody had to leave the house to do it. The number of minutes at his disposal was not great. He had to function between the moment the driver left his car to ring the doorbell and the moment of the man’s return. If he was already on the lawn, he had more time than if he had to leave the house after Mrs. Kimbark’s announcement.”

  “What announcement?”

  “That the guest of honour was coming up the drive.”

  Cicotte glanced furtively around him; but the servants were not within view. They had been sent about their business.

  “Kimbark was in the house, almost certainly,” said the detective.

  “I know. So was Mrs. Kimbark, presumably. If the murderer preceded Garment to the house, and did not enter, we are wasting time by looking through the house. If he came from within the house, he reached the lawn, I think, by way of those side windows—over the balcony; or else he came from the back of the house around the side. Either way, it might have been managed.”

  “That’s something,” admitted Cicotte morosely.

  “Shall we have a look, now, for the weapon?”

  The detective laughed with a note of relief. “You’ve had me on pins and needles, with your ground and lofty tumbling,” he said. “I’ve wanted to dash into that writing room and tear up the place, ever since we entered the house.”

  “I know. I wanted to give the servants an opportunity to dash in first, if any of them were so minded. But nobody has tried to enter. We may assume, I think, that no instructions have been left behind.”

  Ghost strolled into the writing room in his leisurely fashion and pivoted in the centre of the chamber. There were two small desks in the room, and as many chairs. On the wall was a highly modern drawing, elaborately framed: it represented a young girl, stripped naked, contorted upon a bed, reading a book. It was not a graceful performance —not the sort of paper prostitute, cunningly coiled, that one associated with certain magazine covers— nor yet could it be called disgraceful. A few strokes, crude but masterful, presented the entire picture, which could have been the work of only one artist in the world.

  Detective-Sergeant Cicotte ogled the picture shamelessly. “Some baby!” he remarked with authority.

  Ghost glanced at it with practised eye. “Just a reproduction,” he commented critically, “but a very good one.”

  He turned his attention to the desks. Neither contained an instrument dangerous enough to alarm a child. There could be no lurking peril in the ivory paper knife that lay flat upon the writing surface of one, nor in the blunt bronze cutter upon the other.

  Nor were there letters in either desk—public or concealed. No secret drawers popped out under the amateur’s exploring fingers. He was an expert on secret drawers. There simply were none.

  “What the devil,” cried Cicotte impatiently, “was the woman protecting?”

  “This paper drawer,” said Ghost, “looks singularly muddy.”

  He lifted a double quire of notepaper and drew his fingers across the flooring of the drawer. In the corners had collected some tiny fragments of dried clay.

  “The knife was here for a time; then it was removed. She found it on the lawn, where it had been thrown by the murderer. That would be the morning after the murder. She was up early, Cicotte. She anticipated the visit of Mollock and Anger—some visit, at any rate. Perhaps she thought you would be back. To look for the weapon.”

  “It came from the house?”

  “Undoubtedly. Otherwise there would be no reason for her to conceal it. I think she recognized it.”

  “Then she’s taken it with her,” said Cicotte.

  “You have a man on the yacht,” Ghost reminded him.

  “When I get hold of him,” stormed the detective, “he’ll take another correspondence course in detection!”

  Ghost smiled. “After all, he was looking only for letters. He couldn’t know all that we are now thinking. No, it may still be in the house,” he soothed. “As a matter of fact, it may even be outside the house. After the scare, she may have replaced it where she found it. It would be a safe and rather smart thing to do. Did your men search the grounds?”

  “I searched them myself,” replied Cicotte grimly.

  “When was that?”

  “The night it happened.”

  “Then you missed it,” said Ghost positively, “for it was there, that night. Too dark to find it, I suppose.”

  “I searched again the following afternoon— after Anger and your friend Mollock had been here.”

  “By that time Mrs. Kimbark had recovered it and hidden it in the drawer. Neither Mollock nor Anger found it, you may be sure of that. They weren’t even looking for it. Before she left for the East—and this yachting trip—she concealed it again. The safest place, as I say, might well be the spot where it was found, since that spot had been already twice searched.”

  Cicotte turned it over in his mind. “You may be right,” he admitted, “although it sounds a bit like the stage. You’re giving her credit for more cleverness than she probably has. All right, let’s look again.”

  He left the writing room abruptly and strode to the front of the house. Crossing the living room, he glanced casually from the window, and at the same instant stopped short in his stride. A queer sound emanated from his throat.

  “What is it?” asked Ghost, who had followed at his heels.

  But Cicotte was beyond speech. He merely pointed with stabbing finger out of the window, accompanying the gesture with a repetition of the curious bleating that had marked his first paralysis.

  Ghost followed the detective’s gaze.

  A man was approaching the house. He was turning in through the Kimbark gates and walking briskly toward the steps. An odd, nightmarish sensation stole through Ghost’s limbs and made his head light. For an instant he felt his mind slipping. He recovered himself and gripped the official detective by the arm.

  “God in heaven, Mr. Ghost!” whispered Cicotte piously. “Am I going crazy?”

  The man now nearing the Kimbark steps was, to all outward appearances, Detective-Sergeant Bernard Cicotte, who at the moment stood beside the amateur in the Kimbark living room.

  The detective’s eyes were starting from their sockets.

  It was no casual likeness. The plump figure, the slightly mincing step, the familiar brown derby with the brush-like moustache beneath it, all supported the incredible illusion. This man was Cicotte to the last brush-stroke—from the blue boutonnière in his lapel to the glossy surface of his shoecaps. Detective-Sergeant Bernard Cicotte, a famous figure in the streets of Chicago, attired in the horse-blanket suiting that he modestly affected, was advancing along the Kimbark walk with all his customary poise and insolence. From behind the curtains of a side window in the Kimbark living room, Detective-Sergeant Bernard Cicotte watched himself climb the Kimbark steps and pause before the Kimbark panels.

  The face of the detective was a mask of outraged amazement, and Ghost’s was a curious study. Something astonishing and significant, the amateur realized, was happening before his eyes.

  An odd notion went skirling through his mind. What if this were the real Cicotte now poising his thumb above the Kimbark doorbell? Who then would be the man who had come to him in New York?—the man who now stood beside him at the window? What proof had he—Ghost—that one man was more Cicotte, so to speak, than the other? It was an idea as whimsical as it was fantastic, and as disturbing as it was whimsical; an idea that filled him with admiration for the reckless impudence of the impostor.

  A meeting of the two Cicottes was immediately imminent

  Ghost’s hand plunged to his trousers pocket and came up with a small penknife. He drew the detective quickly from the window.

  “Take this,” he ordered. “Keep it until I ask for it
. Don’t ask any questions, please; there isn’t time. There goes the bell. Your job is to keep out of sight. Go back and keep the butler from coming to the door. I’ll talk to this man first, and call you when I need you.”

  His companion nodded. “All right,” he agreed. “But remember,” he added savagely, “I want a crack at that fellow—myself.”

  The words were curiously chosen, it occurred to Ghost; they formed themselves silently upon his lips: “That fellow—myself!” Two Cicottes!—and the world rolled merrily upon its way. Two Cicottes!—and the twentieth century was still young. Two Cicottes!—and one of them was standing at the door asking admittance.

  What had become of sanity?

  Walter Ghost walked slowly into the front hall, paused for an instant behind the glass panel, then opened the door.

  “Good-morning,” he said, and there was something at once aloof and deferential in his manner that would have done credit to an actor.

  The newcomer slipped an insolent foot across the threshold to prevent a sudden dismissal. “I’m Cicotte,” he observed brusquely. “I suppose you remember me? Detective-Sergeant Cicotte of the Bureau. I was here the night of the murder.”

  Ghost bowed politely. “Of course,” he replied. “I remember you very well.”

  But already the man had betrayed himself. He had mistaken Ghost for the butler. Had he been the genuine Cicotte he would have known the Kimbark butler by sight. The man in the doorway was an impostor. The real Cicotte was the burly fellow who had journeyed with the amateur from New York.

  A tardy doubt appeared to cross the intruder’s mind, for he continued quickly: “You are the butler, aren’t you?”

  “Quite right, sir,” answered Walter Ghost.

  “I want to see the house again.”

  “Very well, sir. Will you come in? Mr. Kimbark left word that the police were to be shown every courtesy.”

  “Very nice of him, I’m sure,” commented the stranger on a note of sarcasm. “So he thought we might be back!”